Slow Progress is Still Progress: 5 Reasons Why

Slow progress is still progress because it is mountain times better than falling backwards. I’ve felt the effects of slow progress before and it’s not the easiest thing in the world to endure. I’ve been there before and all you have to do is keep going so that you don’t fall backwards.

Don’t let the slow progress discourage you. It feels like slow progress for 3 – 5 years until it snowballs. Every avalanche started with a single snowball. I’ve been in the personal finance journey for a little over 5 years now. And I finally feel like I’m making some progress going forward.

Every paycheck felt hurtful because a majority of it went to my 401k and my after tax investments. It felt so bad. I was working so hard just for a magical 401k entity to take all of my earnings away from me. This should not be the way. These days, I feel less of that. I have income leftover after contributions to use to my liking.

However, in the earlier days, even though I was progressing, it still didn’t feel like enough. However, that’s the wrong mindset to feel. Slow progress is still progress. As long as you’re moving forward, it’s good enough. There’s no need to reach too close to the sun if you’re going to get burned anyway.

Right now, I have disposable income in order to make my progress not feel so slow. However, it took five years before I finally felt like that. Don’t lose sight of the bigger picture by focusing in the details. Your results are going to come sooner or later. As long as they come, you are on the right path.

Delayed gratification is an underrated skill.

Why Slow Progress is Still Progress

One reason why slow progress is still progress is when you SMACK that social share button and post to your favorite social media! It slowly progresses my articles that helps out your friends and if you could share the article for me, I would really appreciate it.

So with that said let’s get into the article!

1) Positive is Better than Zero

This is the number one mathematical reason why slow progress is still progress. Even if you’re moving forward at a snail’s pace, you’re still moving forward. Don’t get so hung up on the how much that you’re missing out on the actual progress aspect of it. Plenty of people in the world move backwards everyday.

Some may not be their fault and some may be, but the point is that backward movement exists. The ones who move backward not only has to improve in order to break even, they have to improve by a lot just to get to your slow progress. Positive will always be better than negative, in more ways than one.

The last two years have been slow for me. I increased my net worth by approximately $150,000 in 2021 and by approximately $100,000 in 2020. After 4 – 5 years of meticulous saving, I wanted to increase that progress by $200,000 at a minimum. However, by being patient, I believe I can reach that goal in 2022.

The results you want will come sooner or later.

2) Compounded Results

What people don’t understand about progress is that their efforts compound. The effort they put in last year is not all gone. It didn’t vanish or evaporate. They’re still building upon those effort. Take for example, this blog. My effort is not all gone. It still translated to this year.

In 2022, my effort is now just compounded from last year’s efforts. Whatever I do will be a buildup and I want to keep it that way. Slow progress is still progress because you gain more things than the progress itself. You gain the knowledge, experience, and the know how going forward.

That’s more valuable than anyone else gives it credit for and it’s one of the most underrated benefits of progress. The power of compound interest is phenomenal. Whatever you do today, you’re building it up for tomorrow, and so forth and so forth. After doing it for 6 – 8+ years, that’s when the real fun begins.

3) Slow Progress Tests Your Mettle

This is when you finally get to see what you’re made of. Are you the type of person who gets impatient and tries to bet everything you have hoping that one bet will turn into riches? Take, for example, this young fellow. He literally had $400,000 to his name and lost it all on a single Robinhood bet.

With $400,000 at age 26, he was literally set up for life. There’s no more that he needed to do. He could’ve easily just put it in a broad market index fund and get 8% yearly returns. However, he wasn’t satisfied with that and bet it all on one risky bet. He didn’t understand that slow progress is still progress.

The one who is impatient will get destroyed in the long run. Patience is one of the most underrated behavioral characteristic. It’s one of those that goes hand in hand with “trust the process”. Your life will test you in ways you didn’t even know it could test you. The question is, are you going to win or is life going to win?

4) Life is a Marathon

The vast majority of the successful people got there by putting in the work over decades at a time. On average, people reach the millionaire stage around 57 – 62 years old. (Source: Business Insider). That article you read about an 8 year old becoming a Youtube millionaire? That’s literally a rarity.

Your life is a marathon with many years and decades of work to put in. That’s why you should be happy with any amount of progress, even slow ones. Slow progress is still progress. You don’t want to try and sprint in a marathon, that’s an easy way to get a heat stroke.

In 2021, I felt how slow of a progress I was achieving for what I was giving up. It felt so bad. However, I refuse to go all in and risk everything that I built into a single bet. That’s not in my nature. I’m looking at the long term and seeing if my actions will help me fulfill my goals. That’s how you should be looking as well.

5) Wins are Better than Losses

A 50% decline means that you need to generate 100% returns just to break even. Not to progress further from where you were at. But just to break even. Wins are monumentally better than losses. Any amount of time when you are forging ahead is a good time.

Even if you break even, it’s stil mountain times better than losing. Don’t get so impatient and unsatisfied with the win that you’re complaining that it’s not as much of a win as you would’ve liked. Slow progress is still progress. If after a number of years you want to take a little bit more risk than you’ve done before, then by all means!

However, it shouldn’t be such an outlandish risk that you’re betting your entire future on it. That’s the recipe for failure and you don’t want a recipe for failure. These days, after putting in the work for 5+ years, I’m looking at taking on slightly higher risks than historically.

However, I still put in the legwork to have the leeway in order to do so. I still put in my dues.

Slow Progress is Healthy

The one who doubles their results in a single day is cursed. Now that person will always believe that doubling in a single day is the normal returns. That everyone else who hasn’t been able to just doesn’t “get it”. In the long run, 100% returns every day will mean that you become the world. It means that you will dominate the world.

Think about it. Do you really think that that will happen? If you double every day, not just in investment returns but in any other improvement metric, that means you should be the master in a little less than a week or two. Think about how realistic that is. If you really think that it is realistic, check back after trying it for a week.

Replicating 100% daily improvement over a week is impossible. Slow progress is still progress because it’s a healthy form of climbing up and getting ahead. Even if it doesn’t feel like it at times. As long as you’re progressing by a faster rate every year, then you are doing really well.

It may not feel like it’s fast enough but it’s still fast. It’s better than what most of people do, which is try to never move forward at all. Most people are fine staying in their bubble while they let someone else be at the forefront of change. They’re not interested in moving forward or upward, they’re just existing. That’s no good.

Any progress that you make in a given year is a good year because slow progress is still progress. A good rule of thumb to determine if you’re being impatient is to ask yourself if you at least put in 2 – 3 years worth of effort at your craft. If you haven’t, then it’s impatience tugging at you.

Slow Progress is Better than No Progress

It’s frustrating when you put in a lot of work just to end up at the same place. That’s not just not progressing forward, it means you’re stuck. That’s the definition of no progress. However, that’s not what slow progress is. It’s when you’re moving forward but at a snail’s pace.

That’s still phenomenal. Have you ever had periods of no progress? I have, and it’s frustrating. I used to play the piano often and it just felt like no matter what I did, I just couldn’t get better. Even though I put in the hours and I still felt mediocre and wasn’t progressing. That felt frustrating and one of the reasons why I hated playing it.

When you put in effort, you expect results. Even if it’s not grand results you expect, you still expect some sort of results and progress. When you have input but get no output, that’s frustration at play. Slow progress is still progress because that’s not what you experience when you get slow progress.

You just feel frustrated that you’re not moving forward as quickly. That’s still less painful than standing still. It’s much less painful. In 2018, my net worth was very close to breaking even because of the trade wars that were going on that ended the S&P 500 at negative. That was heartbreaking.

My morale was at an all time low. I was only helped by my $40,000 bonus that came a couple months after. That brought life back into me. Slow progress is till progress because no progress will make you want to pull your hair out. It doesn’t feel great. It feels like you’re stuck in one place.